Will Rick Grimes appear on Fear the Walking Dead? Recent statements from Fear showrunner Dave Erickson imply that we may see Rick wake up from his coma "on camera" in the second season of the Walking Dead spin-off.

We've known since the news first broke of a Walking Dead spin-off that Fear the Walking Dead would follow different characters than its parent show, and would show the origin of the same zombie virus. It stands to reason that the show will take place while Rick Grimes is in a coma during the Walking Dead pilot episode, as the world was recognizable when he was shot and had utterly fallen apart by the time he awoke. It's since been established that Rick was unconscious for five weeks, and at a San Diego Comic Con roundtable with Collider, Erickson stated that the prequel spin-off will adhere to that timeline:

"If you actually track season one, you'll see that it maybe covers three weeks," Erickson said. "So the nice thing for us was that [Fear] was structured in such a way that there is still a whole season-long process of discovery to be had. Which allows us to go into season two-I'm not saying when we would talk to Rick in Atlanta after he woke up from his coma-but I think somewhere in the body of Season 2 that event would happen on camera."

All we can say about this quotation is that it's extremely unclear. At first, it seems that he's just comparing the timelines of the two shows, and explaining that chronologically speaking, Rick Grimes would wake up from his coma at some point in season two. But he's oddly specific about it, with his reference to "talking to Rick in Atlanta" and his contention that it would happen "on camera."

If we had to guess, we'd say that Fear would never go so far as to have Andrew Lincoln guest star, as the characters in the spin-off are all the way in L.A., but there will probably be some sort of Easter egg to let the viewers know where they are in the Walking Dead timeline. Personally, I'd love to see someone in L.A. pick up Rick's radio transmissions when he was making futile attempts to reach Morgan at the beginning of the first season.

Fear the Walking Dead premieres on August 23, while The Walking Dead returns for its sixth season on October 11.